FAQ - About Child Sponsorship

Child sponsorship is an opportunity to personally connect with a child, family, and community in need. You’ll walk alongside them as they work on lasting solutions to fight poverty and help vulnerable children reach their God-given potential.

When you become a child sponsor, while your funds will go towards community based solutions, you’ll start to build a relationship with one special child. You can connect with your child by writing letters and emails or sending cards and gifts. Knowing that someone far away cares about them and their future will be a great encouragement for a sponsored child.

Our decades of experience have proven that the most effective way to help a child is to strengthen the child’s entire community. We do this by pooling your monthly sponsorship donations with those of other sponsors to provide the assistance that children and families living in poverty need most. Your generous donations will help your child, their community, and other children in need by providing vital resources like clean water, nutritious food, healthcare, education, economic opportunities, and more.

Each community that we work with faces different challenges and has different needs, so the work we do is unique to each community. We listen to the people in the community to understand the issues hindering children from reaching their full potential and partner with them to address their short-term and long-term needs. We also work with local groups—such as churches or government organizations—to build stronger communities.

Experience has taught us that the best way to change a child's life is to transform the world in which they live - their family, their community and the local area. Your monthly donation is combined with the donations of other sponsors so we can provide long-term resources for lasting change for all the children in your child’s community.

When you sponsor a child, you can help to change their world. World Vision’s Child Sponsorship Program helps children living in disadvantaged regions to escape poverty. As a child sponsor, you partner with us as we work with families, community groups and governments in breaking the cycle of poverty and creating long-term change. Using your donations, we identify the causes of the child’s poverty and vulnerability, and create development projects designed to address them. Our goal is that all children in sponsorship communities will benefit from our work, which can include improved healthcare, education, water, sanitation and food. There are so many wonderful stories of sponsored children who’ve grown up healthy and happy – thanks to generous people like you. Depending on child and community needs, sponsorship projects may focus on:

Clean water and sanitation: Access to clean water, toilets and hygiene education give your sponsored child better health and more time and energy to learn.

Health and nutrition: Quality local health services and health and nutrition education for families give your sponsored child the chance to grow up strong and protected from preventable illness.

Food and agriculture: Skills for families to grow more crops and better protect the environment and give your sponsored child the food they need to lead a healthy, active life.

Education and child rights: Quality education and protecting child rights give your sponsored child knowledge and skills and the freedom to have a brighter future.

Income generation: By supporting communities and families to improve their incomes you can help your sponsored child reach their full potential as they gain access to life's essentials.

Sponsored children and their families do not receive direct cash benefits. Instead, your monthly donation is pooled with other donations to fund development programs that benefit your sponsored child and their whole community, as well as other children in need — ensuring you have maximum impact. And it works! Because of our community-focused solutions, for every child you help, four more children benefit, too. Experience has taught us that the best way to change a child's life is to transform the world in which they live - their family, their community and the local area.

Yes, we exist to make a lasting difference in the most efficient and effective way possible in the lives of the world’s most vulnerable girls and boys. We account for every dollar donated and focus on creating sustainable change for those we serve. To learn more about how donations are helping transform the lives of communities around the world, check out our latest Annual Results Report on our Financial Accountability page.

Of the funds given to World Vision over the past 5 years, 82.3% went directly to programs that help children and families, 12.0% went to fundraising, and 5.7% was allocated to administration. Our external auditor, KPMG, conducts regular audits to verify the accuracy of our financial reporting.

When you become a child sponsor, you will receive a welcome package and letter of introduction from your sponsored child or World Vision staff working in the child’s community. Each year you will receive an updated photo of your sponsored child and a progress report, which will let you know about the good news happening in his or her community.

You will also have access to My World Vision, a digital platform that allows you to manage your information, learn more about your sponsored child’s community, meet other children who live there, and follow along with their progress. When you sponsor a child, you provide access to basic necessities such as food, clean water, education and health care.

The selection of children for sponsorship is a respectful process that happens in partnership with their community. We work with community representatives to identify the local areas where the needs are greatest and the community then selects children from those areas for sponsorship. Sponsored children are selected from the most vulnerable families and being sponsored often gives them increased visibility and importance in the community. Participation in all World Vision programs is voluntary, and sponsored children and their families make the decision to be a part of the program. We always respect the rights of families to make decisions about this. Your sponsored child, along with other children in their community, benefits from the changes made possible by your donations. Children in the community who aren’t sponsored yet still benefit from sponsorship-funded community improvements in areas like clean water, healthcare, education, job opportunities, and more.

Sponsorship is a long-term commitment that lasts 10-12 years in one sponsored community with continued commitment beyond that as we move to serve more children in great need in other communities. However, the length of each sponsorship depends on the needs of the child and their community. Your child’s age of independence or circumstances will vary from country to country. Sponsorship may end for any of the following reasons:

The community has “graduated.” The goal of sponsorship is to help break the cycle of poverty so children and families can step into the future with well-founded hope. When sustainability goals are met, projects are phased out and we move on to serve children in great need in other communities. This is a time for celebration!

Your child becomes self-sufficient. In many cases, children are sponsored until they finish school, reach the age of independence in their community, are able to support themselves.

Occasionally, circumstances arise that mean a child must leave the sponsorship program. For example, a child’s family may move out of the community to an area where World Vision Child Sponsorship is not available.

If circumstances change and your child is no longer available for sponsorship, we’ll notify you and send you a new child in need to begin sponsoring.

No. We do not organize adoption or bringing children to Canada for visits. Your help to improve a child’s quality of life and self-reliance in their own countries and cultures has deeper value than moving them to a foreign country.

In everything we do, we aim to find the best balance between cost, donor satisfaction and the impact of donated dollars. As a best practice, we will provide donors with prior notice before any proposed increase is implemented. We will obtain your consent to any increase in your monthly sponsorship amount through an ‘opt-out’ process. This means that if you receive World Vision Canada’s notice of an increase and want to participate, there is nothing further required from you. If you don’t want to participate, simply indicate so by using one of the easy ‘opt-out’ options that will be provided. As always, if you wish to stop your sponsorship, you may do so at any time.